Steve Kerr will coach the Western Conference all-stars in New Orleans this week, and a fellow Western Conference coach has some advice for Kerr that would seem odd on the face of it. Clippers head coach Doc Rivers’ advice: keep Russell Westbrook happy.
While that sounds a little strange when you first hear it, Rivers’ advice is actually quite sound. When he coached in the All-Star Game with Boston in 2008 and 2011, he didn’t worry about his own players, whom he knew he’d have on side. He wanted to make sure that the players who could beat him later in the postseason didn’t have any lingering ill feelings towards him.
”I made sure they loved me, the other ones,” Rivers said, according to the AP. ”I knew my guys liked me. That was not my concern.
“I didn’t want some guy trying to score 50 on us when we played them, so I was really good at that and I went to each guy, ‘How much do you want to play? Do you want to play?”’
Rivers didn’t ask his own players who they wanted to play with or even how much they wanted to play, because he had the relationship with the players already. It was the other guys he made sure to cater to.
Kerr will be coaching in his second All-Star Game; he led the West back in 2015. He recalled barely doing any coaching until the end of the game, as you’d expect with any All-Star Game, and congratulated the West All-Stars by playing them a lighthearted video making fun of them. Russell Westbrook was an All-Star that year.
”I remember handing the ball to Chris Paul seven straight times and turning to the assistants and saying, `You know, what a phenomenal coaching job that was, giving the ball to Chris like that,”’ he joked. ”Nobody else could have thought of that.”
Will Kerr have to think more on Sunday in New Orleans while trying to heed Doc’s advice, or will he coach an All-Star Game as an All-Star Game should be coached? If this season is any evidence, even an angry Russell Westbrook can’t beat the Warriors, so maybe Steve Kerr should just enjoy the weekend.
[SI]
